When asked about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an interview with CNN published Tuesday, the Nevada senator said “the country is ready for a woman” to be president.

“I like that guy. He is so nice,” Reid said of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

As for Sen. Ted Cruz, he said he and the Texas Republican “disagree on virtually everything. But on a personal basis, he’s been very nice to me. I don’t think he stands much of a chance, but I admire his tenacity for thinking he does.”

In Ohio, Clinton leads all Republicans, but some, like Chris Christie, are gaining ground. Christie trails Clinton 45 percent to 39 percent, up since Feb. 3, when Clinton led the New Jersey governor 47 percent to 34 percent.

Ted Cruz thunders about what he calls a “fundamentally unserious” U.S. defense policy, but when he had a chance to weigh in during Senate Armed Services Committee hearings, he rarely showed up.

Cruz, who announced last week he’s running for president, has the committee’s worst attendance record — by far.

The Texas Republican attended just three of the panel’s 16 public hearings so far this year, according to a POLITICO review of transcripts from full committee hearings. The average committee member attended 13 of the 16 hearings, and Cruz is the only one of the panel’s 26 members with an attendance rate below 50 percent.

Cruz missed opportunities to cross-examine the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan and was absent from a session on the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay — despite being a leading opponent of President Barack Obama’s decision to swap five Taliban commanders at Guantánamo for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. The freshman senator also missed opportunities to cross-examine officials about the effects of across-the-board spending cuts on military readiness and the appropriate levels of compensation for the troops.

The blood is in the water. The game is afoot. And the Republicans are brawling.

While Democrats are usually viewed as the undisciplined, fractious party, it is Republicans who sharpen their knives and slice each other up when the White House is at stake.

The struggle is between two groups within the GOP.

The establishment finally recognizes that the party must broaden its base. If the party appeals to only white, Christian conservatives, it will wind up as a regional party, capable of winning Senate and House seats but incapable of winning a national election.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz has become the first Republican to eschew the phony “exploratory” phase and announce an actual presidential campaign. Rand Paul is apparently next. But as every political pooh-bah knows, the 2016 presidential contest has been underway for months, maybe even years. As this is written, in fact, several hotly contested GOP primaries already have commenced—primaries that will go a long way toward determining the Republican nominee, despite the painfully quaint notion that the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire will get the “first” say.

Here, then, in no particular order, is a voter’s guide to some of the real 2016 contests—and who is currently leading them.

The Laura Ingraham Primary

There are other top radio talkers, but few are more effective in their crusades than Laura Ingraham, the lawyer and best-selling author. She’s both unrelenting and effective, and she has proven unusually influential with a fervent fan base numbering in the millions. Among her previous victims: Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, immigration reform proposals and their supporters, and a growing list of establishment politicians in the GOP. It’s thanks to Ingraham that people have a hard time remembering who Eric Cantor was.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio confirmed Monday that he plans to make a big April 13 announcement — likely his presidential bid and likely at the Freedom Tower, an iconic Miami building known as the Ellis Island of the South.

“We haven’t reserved a specific site yet … I won’t confirm that,” Rubio said on “The Five,” one of Fox News’ most-watched talk shows. “But I will announce on April 13 what I’m going to do next in terms of running for president or the U.S. Senate.”

One of the hosts, Dana Perino, quickly followed up: “So you will announce that you’re running for president?”

“I’ll announce something on April 13th,” Rubio responded. “If people want more detail, they can go on marcorubio.com and then they can gain access to both tickets [to] our events, and I’ll give them more detail about it. But I’m looking forward to it.”

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise has a solution for the GOP’s presidential election woes — double-down on conservatism.

The Louisiana Republican is hoping the party avoids nominating a moderate in 2016, noting that candidates from the GOP’s center have failed to win the White House during the last two elections. Scalise thinks this is a mistake, and he wants to avoid picking a standard bearer who isn’t a true conservative.

“People are like, ‘Oh, should it be a moderate? Somebody who can get elected?’” Scalise said during a wide-ranging interview in his Capitol office.

“You know, I’d argue we’ve had moderates nominated the last few times and they haven’t won,” he said. “Show me the last time a conservative has lost the presidency. I think if we have a strong conservative with a proven record, we’ll win the White House.”

Hillary Clinton says the relationship between the United States and Israel should return to a “constructive footing,” including a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians, according to reports of comments she made Sunday.

“Secretary Clinton thinks we need to all work together to return the special U.S.-Israel relationship to constructive footing, to get back to basic shared concerns and interests, including a two-state solution pursued through direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, citing the former secretary of state’s telephone discussion with the group. “We must ensure that Israel never becomes a partisan issue.”

Clinton’s comments on Israel are her first on the two countries’ relationship since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reelection on March 17, according to The New York Times.

The remarks come amid troubled times for the relationship between the two countries, as President Barack Obama and his administration have come out strongly against Netanyahu’s pre-election comments, when he urged supporters to vote because Israeli Arabs were voting in “droves” and said a two-state solution was off the table.

As he introduces himself to GOP primary voters nationwide, Scott Walker points to his long list of election wins in the swing state of Wisconsin — 11, to be exact.

Yet it’s a single defeat, Republicans back home say, that reveals the most about his political character.

He doesn’t talk about the race on the campaign trail. But the hard-earned lessons from his failed, slapdash run for governor in 2006 have shaped Walker’s career since, putting him on a trajectory that has led him to become one of the early front-runners for the 2016 GOP nomination.

At the time, Walker was Milwaukee county executive, an elected position in the state’s most populous county. He didn’t last very long in the governor’s race; trailing in the polls and short on cash, he dropped out six months before the Republican primary.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley stepped up his criticism of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton on Sunday, breaking with a previous strategy of ignoring questions about her.

Without ever directly attacking the former secretary of state during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” O’Malley portrayed himself as a new face for the Democratic Party and a progressive alternative, more willing to directly confront inequality and take on Wall Street.

“I think that our country always benefits from new leadership and new perspectives,” he said. “Let’s be honest here, the presidency of the United States is not some crown to be passed between two families. It is an awesome and sacred trust.”

The former governor, who often trails Clinton by 50 percentage points or more in early-state polls, could end up being Clinton’s only challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is also weighing a race, and Vice President Joe Biden has yet to rule it out.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is swearing off negative campaigning as he begins his run for the White House.

“There may be other candidates who choose to throw rocks in my direction,” the GOP presidential hopeful said in an interview aired Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I’m not going to engage in the personal mudslinging, in the negative attacks on people’s character.”

Cruz last week became the first Republican to officially enter the presidential race. But he insisted that, despite his reputation as an archconservative and a bomb-thrower, he had avoided personal attacks over the past two years in the Senate.

“In my time in the Senate, there’s been more than a few rocks tossed in my direction from Democrats and Republicans,” he said. “Yet in my entire time there, I haven’t reciprocated. You have never heard me speak ill of any senator, Republican or Democrat, and I don’t intend to start.”

Presidential politics in 2016 will reflect the shifting reality of America.

By DOUG SOSNIK

3/29/15 7:53 AM EDT

Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik was a close adviser to President Bill Clinton, and he’s famed in Washington circles for his closely held, big-think memos on the state of American politics. Here’s his latest.

***

The country is going through the most significant period of change since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Across the United States, we are seeing a convergence of economic, technological and demographic forces that is transforming every aspect of our lives. These changes are all reinforcing each other, adding to the pace and the scale of the disruption.

Despite the upheaval Americans are experiencing, voting patterns in presidential elections have remained virtually unchanged for the past 25 years—with the majority of states voting the same way in the last six elections. That’s not unexpected, even at a time of great change, because elections, in fact, historically have served as lagging indicators—not leading ones—of the direction of the country. Rather than forecasting the future, election results help us make better sense of the past.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is strongly considering launching his presidential campaign April 13 at the Freedom Tower, a historic Miami landmark known as the “Ellis Island of the South,” according to Republicans familiar with his thinking.

From its name to its history — it once served as a U.S. clearinghouse for Cuban exiles fleeing Fidel Castro — Miami’s Mediterranean-style Freedom Tower underscores the themes of Rubio’s political career and his likely campaign. He’s a first-generation son of immigrants who has sought to make the American dream synonymous with his biography.

Rubio’s possible April 13 launch date was first reported by The Tampa Bay Times. However, the Miami Heat plays against the Orlando Magic that evening at American Airlines Arena, which sits right across Biscayne Boulevard — raising the prospect of a traffic nightmare. And the Freedom Tower hasn’t yet been secured by Rubio’s Washington-based team, which will inspect it this week to see if it’s the right venue.

They’re also considering other locations, which have yet to surface publicly.

In his first week as a presidential candidate, Ted Cruz raked in $2 million, doubling his team’s initial goal of $1 million for the time period.

The Texas Republican, who officially announced his bid for president on Monday, had pulled in that figure by Thursday night, his aides confirmed.

He hit the initial $1 million goal early Tuesday morning, hours after announcing, his team said, the result in part of a swanky New York City fundraiser Monday night and online donations.

Cruz, a favorite of the conservative grassroots, won’t be the pick of GOP establishment megadonors and still faces an uphill battle to raise the massive sums that are critical to running a successful campaign. But by beating fundraising expectations this week, the senator was able to project strength as other likely presidential contenders, like Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, move closer to officially joining him in the presidential field.

Ted Cruz is the first Republican presidential candidate out of the starting gate, but GOP insiders in Iowa and New Hampshire are overwhelmingly skeptical of the first-term Texas senator’s chances of being the eventual nominee or succeeding in the general election.

This week’s survey of The POLITICO Caucus — a bipartisan group of key activists, operatives and thought leaders in New Hampshire and Iowa — reveals grave concerns about Cruz’s electability. And after eight years in the wilderness, most Republicans want a nominee who can win.

Not one of the 100 respondents believes that Cruz would win the Iowa caucuses or New Hampshire primary if they took place this week, though there is widespread agreement that he is much better positioned in the Hawkeye State than the Granite State. And nine out of 10 Republican insiders in the early states believe Ted Cruz couldn’t carry their state — both Iowa and New Hampshire are swing states, though relatively small electoral-vote prizes — against Hillary Clinton in the general.

Launching his candidacy on Monday at Liberty University in Virginia, the senator tailored his roll-out toward the evangelicals who powered Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee’s victories in the past two Iowa caucuses. But most insiders believe Cruz will ultimately pose the biggest problem for Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who will kick off his own campaign on April 7.

The time and location of Hillary Clinton’s long-anticipated campaign kickoff are closely guarded secrets among her scattered staff — but what she’ll do immediately after her announcement is coming into clearer focus.

Clinton, according to several people familiar with the still-in-flux planning process, will embark on a short tour that will almost certainly include Iowa — and perhaps other states — to interact with voters in a series of events, most of them in low-key settings.

That might be easier said than done, considering the hundreds of national and international news media that are likely to monitor Clinton’s every move. But her team is keen to speed her transition from aloof global personality to the kind of down-to-earth campaigner who emerged during the latter half of the 2008 primary season when she barnstormed through Ohio, West Virginia and Indiana.

“They know that they need to reintroduce Hillary to America,” said one Democratic insider familiar with the Clinton team’s thinking. “They know it makes no sense to think of this as, ‘Let’s start where she left off on the national stage.’ This is not a continuation of the Hillary we knew as secretary of state. That’s the focus of their energy.”

As he pulls together his expected presidential campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, Sen. Rand Paul is confronted by defections from an unexpected quarter: the die-hard idealists whose energy powered his father’s campaigns.

That network of committed supporters was expected to convey to Paul, the natural successor to Ron Paul’s libertarian movement, providing him with a plug-and-play ground organization in the make-or-break early voting states. But instead of embracing the Kentucky senator, many of those grass-roots activists are turning their backs on him, disillusioned by the younger Paul’s concessions to mainstream politics.

One of the most prominent defectors is Drew Ivers, chairman of Ron Paul’s 2012 Iowa campaign, who says he will not endorse Rand Paul for president. On Tuesday, three members of Iowa’s Ron Paul-aligned Liberty movement — state Sen. Jason Shultz and former Iowa Republican Party central committee members Chad Steenhoek and Joel Kurtinitis — announced the same, adding that they will support Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Ivers said he does not plan to endorse any candidate.

“Sen. Rand Paul continues to have tremendous support from the vast majority of the liberty movement,” said Sergio Gor, communications director for the Paul campaign.

The 2016 Republican nomination contest spilled onto the Senate floor Thursday, turning a marathon budget debate into a battle over which candidate is prepared to lead the country at a time of war.

Four GOP senators are trying to gain the upper hand on the commander-in-chief test — Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham — and their competition was on vivid display as the Senate took up a Rubio plan to pump tens of billions of dollars more into the Pentagon budget. Paul blasted the idea because the new spending wasn’t offset by other cuts. And caught in the middle was Cruz, who’s pitching himself as a fiscal conservative who can appeal to the hawkish and libertarian wings of the GOP but ultimately sided with Rubio and Graham.

In an interview with POLITICO, Paul lambasted his foes for engaging in “reckless” and “irresponsible” behavior, showing that they lacked the “courage” and conviction to rein in the country’s mountain of debt. He said there are now two camps in the GOP primary field: one that cares about the debt, and another that does not.

“I think there are a great deal of problems for people who want to argue that they are fiscal conservatives and yet would simply borrow hundreds of billions of dollars for defense,” Paul said. “I think it is irresponsible and dangerous to the country to borrow so much money to add into defense.”

When New Hampshire Republican primary voters say that when they think of prospective presidential candidate Jeb Bush, the first words that come to mind are “family,” “legacy” and “dynasty,” according to a survey released by Suffolk University on Thursday.

As for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Bush’s closest challenger in the poll, most say they don’t know or did not answer. The second-most prevalent response was “anti-union/right to work,” reflecting the governor’s record on labor issues in the state.

Opinion on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is mixed, with 39 percent viewing him unfavorably and 38 percent viewing him in a positive light. Christie is one of more than a half dozen other Republicans scheduled to speak at a two-day event in the state next month.

The poll, which offered no clear frontrunner, asked respondents in an open-ended fashion whom they would support, and then asked those who could not provide an answer to select one from a list.

Senate Republicans corralled enough votes from fiscal conservatives and defense hawks to pass their budget on Friday, scoring a win for the new GOP majority and setting the stage for high-stakes negotiations with the House over a final budget deal.

After a marathon voting session that stretched into the morning hours on Friday, the Senate passed its spending blueprint, 52-46.

Throughout the “vote-a-rama,” much of the focus centered on the handful of Republicans mulling presidential bids in 2016: Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina backed the budget, while Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky opposed it.

“The Democrat-led Senate for years refused not only to pass a balanced budget, but any budget at all,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said following the vote. “Those days are over, and the proof is passage of a balanced plan with ideas that Congress’ nonpartisan analysts tell us would boost jobs, raise income and drive economic growth.”